from plans to. start. backtracking on promises human rights groups condemn america's new defense act. to be detained indefinitely and keeps open a prison camp. syrian rebels far on international journalists including the arabic news crew who are covering the conflict in the country. most britons want to get out of the european union cash and legal decisions at home the prime minister says he'll be fully euro skeptic during his next election campaign the top stories .

around the world online on satellite this is r.t. within twenty four hours a day live from moscow the us defense act for twenty thirteen is being greeted by harsh criticism from human rights groups after president obama signed the bill into law despite earlier veto threats the measure allows the indefinite detention of suspects and backtracks on the closure of guantanamo prison camp the law extends the restrictions on transferring detainees out of guantanamo for another year despite obama's promise to close it when he first came to power he's failed the first test of the second term allowing the military to definitely detain american citizens over terrorism allegations without charge or trial civil liberties groups are pushing forward with a lawsuit against the measure which they insist is constitutional activist tangerine bone and told r.t. that to her the new law feels like a major threat. i bet against and so he's my government.

supporting joanna science and also bradley manning and as you know we are you know many people and our government have terrorist groups. that are. extremely scary and certainly could be used against me and my international team and veteran congressman dennis kucinich is also disappointed with a new national defense out claiming it's part of a tendency to undermine democracy there are great human rights concerns here. that people could be held indefinitely violates a constitutional privilege that people have. we have a constitutional challenge here where not only the national. defense authorization act but the patriot act and other legislation have gradually moved america away from

a robust. freedom to a more limited freedom that is based on proscriptions by the government. this is more than problematic because what has always made made america america is the fact that we follow our constitution and we protect our constitution and we protect people against unreasonable search and seizure we protect people against being seized without right to. know the charges against them or a right to an attorney or a right to a trial we have in the past condemned government being involved in spying now we have a much broader. spy network this is something that is profoundly anti-democratic i have repeatedly taken exception to it as a member of congress. and r.t. arabic news crew and several international journalists have come under rebel sniper

fire in syria while covering the conflict there the r.t. news team are accompanying the military on a counter insurgency sweep one of our colleagues colonel sucker was injured while running for cover and here's his account. we arrived at the damascus suburb early in the morning to report on the syrian army operation we were moving from street to street and when we reached the dock my colleagues and i got caught in crossfire we tried to escape running one after another fearing that armed rebels would notice us a syrian army soldier accompanied us the entire time he constantly kept his on the situation and helped us to escape the gunfire the rebels were firing on us my colleagues and i were wearing bulletproof bass with the word press song them that the firing was very intense and it was difficult to find shelter i ran and fell down i hurt my arms but the syrian army doctors gave me first aid on the scene so i could continue to do my job there were many other correspondents there with me

including iranians and syrians one of the syrian cameramen was also slightly wounded like me. may want to call bomb blast has ripped through a crowded petrol station in the syrian capital damascus conflicting reports say the number of killed was up to eleven people with children among the dead dozens more civilians were wounded u.s. will correspondent russ baker says such attacks a typical of the western backed rebel fighters trying to bring down the president said that i've covered a few dangerous situations myself over the years and we ality is there is no way to be saved in war time though these are the basic thing that we are doing there is we're providing the kind of a gritty tax here for the average person so they can kind of in the sort of experience that from the far there's going to be a lot of in the way of covert operations as fonts are by outside parties that have a stake in haste inning some sort of a resolution of a situation there's no question and we this is pretty obvious on the surface that

western countries that are including my own have stepped up their involvement and want to get assad out as fast as possible and these are the sorts of things that we've seen historically going all the way back. the guatemala the nine hundred fifty s. and iran and so forth these sorts of provocations are very very i think we're going to see them increase until something or other is. pretty clearly i think the western countries don't want any kind of halfway behaviors they want out entirely and i think he is not going to do that until the last possible moment. britain without brussels that's a future majority in the u.k. now once the public is disillusioned with e.u. membership and prime minister david cameron has promised to enter the next election with a clear euro skeptic position and i discussed it with. the e.u.'s popularity at a very very low amongst the british public at the moment we just had a poll that asked respondents to grade institutions like in school and the european

union got an average grade of a d. plus from the british public that's not very very high now on a more serious note this recent poll it's really marked a tipping point because for the first time in decades the number of people that say that they would vote for britain leaving the european union is the majority of the british public so it's really turning a person telling internation of real euro skeptics at the moment and it's not just the result of one poll we've seen things like for example british support for political parties and to european ones like the u.k. independence party it's at an all time high so lots of bad news for pro europeans at the moment so what is the main grudge the many people are holding against the. well the british public has always been very divided over membership anyway but the past year has been particularly difficult we've seen you know the chronic financial

crisis in the eurozone with a real loss of confidence that but also the same time at home they have crippling austerity measures so there's a growing resentment towards the boss sums of money that leaves the british treasury and comes straight from the u.k. budget goes straight to brussels every yeah when very terrible love project and it's not just the money there's also the aspect of the control of north that comes from brussels that many people want to see returned back to westminster so this. goes all the way to the top of the u.k. doesn't it right at the top the political levels. well indeed david cameron the prime minister has just said that the conservative party is going to be going into the next general election in twenty fifteen as a euro skeptic party is an anti european political party that really shows that you know the government's banking on the fact that the british public is are you going

to get fed up with british membership in and that they're really confident that that's going to happen what about brussels and how is it responding to the way that britain is giving the cold shoulder. well it can't be too pleasant listening to all this negativity about yourself because there are reports flying around now that. senior members of the european parliament want to offer britain a junior membership status associate membership and it would in fact be a bit of a demotion whereby britain since its grumbling so much of its membership in the european union it would have much less influence over issues within the european union itself so it's got all the hallmarks of a relationship going quite sour and now it's either going to be a question of who dumps who fussed or not salvageable but with public opinion turning towards britain getting out it's going to be harder and harder to stay in. in the middle east fatah holds its biggest rally since some ask him to power in

gaza hundreds of thousands of photos for his mom the group some of us for only up to rival hamas cave in the go ahead war in the background on that in just a few minutes from now plus. president putin has made it to the top of the list of the world's most powerful people but still only took second place and will be explaining why later this hour. he survived war atrocities. to make a final decision. has changed his life and the world around him. by giving up. hope. and love to so many children.

nikolai the american worker on t.v. . more news today violence is once again flared up. in these are the images world world has been seeing from the streets of canada after. the giant corporations are ruled today. just over some months ago the french placed their trust in socialist leader for all and giving him a mandate for change but his promises ranging from economic prosperity to a non gay marriage approving harder to achieve perhaps he thought and as artie's and found out people are already losing trust in the new leader. the debate on

whether gay marriage should be allowed has split french society for years with protests about the issue often ending in violence with francoise on coming to power the gay community breathed a sigh of relief but it may have been too soon activists say the new law which is going through parliament in january is not exactly what they've been dreaming of but we are. very happy that draft laws been introduced by the government to open marriage to same sex couples and option and supposedly. medically assisted procreation but we're still very concerned because. people against same sex marriage same sex equality are getting very strong including in the parliament. in the initial mayor's were obliged to officially register gay couples marital status and that's where many revolted including francois labelle the mayor of central

paris. allowing same sex marriages in france and moreover permitting them to adopt children will destroy the foundations of our family institution if we allow this now the next step will be allowing paedophilia and incest. so it seems in this scenario no side is completely happy which puts the french president and his electoral promise under serious pressure from bringing the french troops back from afghanistan to creating more jobs in france and preventing the country from going into austerity during his campaign to become a normal president francois hollande had made many promises some of which now experts say may backfire against the french leader and if the gay marriage law wasn't divisive enough splurge to impose a seventy five percent tax on the wealthy may become another sticking point several million years have already decided to take their businesses out of france that's

called a lot of problems and it does divide the country because a lot of people realize that the rich aren't going so far as financial problems everybody's going to have to pay it. including socialist voters which of course frost all along when he was being elected gave the impression that. this wouldn't happen the latest polls suggest popularity has dropped by twenty percent winning the election may prove to be the far easier challenge than what awaits the french president now with the economic producers for twenty thirteen in france looking far from optimistic he could face an uphill jordan and the ski r.t. reporting from paris. thousands of supporters of president mahmoud abbas fatah party are celebrating its anniversary rival party a mass which governs gaza has given it permission to hold the event for the first time since the thought of five years ago president abbas addressed the rally on

a big screen from his west bank headquarters in ramallah mostly to how that michele urged reconciliation and national unity during his own rally in gaza last month a little analyst on a nearly i spoke to middle earlier he says it's time for the chief factions to landside their differences hamas will have to look in to the hand they are in fact that will have to look into the hamas in the eye and both sides have to agree on only one thing we don't need more of the consolation we don't need more the conciliation agreements because there were so many agreements signed between the two parties but not one of them has been honored or implemented but hamas cannot take over palestine because the concerns of netanyahu are baseless and groundless he's the only israeli leader who has been giving support to hamas or not only to hamas go to every extremist group on the palestinian side simply because he's dumping the palestinian moderates he's dumping the leadership of president abbas is dumping the political negotiations with the with the palestinians and he's carrying

on his own agenda of it of increasing the number of jewish settlements in the west bank even though they are illegally they are illegal under international law he carries on his policies this route every chance of reaching a two state solution between the palestinians and the israelis if the israeli withdrawal from gaza was based on an agreement with the palestinian authority we have we would have seen a totally different middle east today. in europe it's spanish locksmiths who say they now hold the key to a sturdy and so if they were all pretty any longer with the authorities you've been repossessed homes and demanding a change of locks you can find out more about that on a website at the moment also online. there's almost in love to mine says the u.s. with the senate and investigation to determine if the cia gave an appropriate access to the goons create. or not and plenty of other features and stories on the web site r.t.

don't come from a putin has been named the most powerful person on earth the us foreign policy magazine has the russian president at the head of its annual list of the world's most influential people however he didn't make it into first place which was left blank zone he's got a check on explains it was the international political think tank you raise your group that came up with a list of the world's most powerful individuals with the russian president at the top of that list then they decided no they couldn't leave him there so they put mr nobody at the top of their list so why they would put in a second to mr a lawyer missis nobody according to this think tank into the foreign policy magazine that published the list authors explain that they left the top position empty because the modern world has no clear leader they said they also said that they based their choice of names on that list on the individual's ability to single handedly quote bring about change that significantly affect the lives and fortunes of large numbers of people of the russian president followed by u.s.

federal reserve chairman ben bernanke before the influence the organization has on the u.s. economy and by extension on the global economy german chancellor angela merkel for policies that are quote the glue that binds the euro and us president barack obama he ranks the fifth on the list and then you have the head of the european central bank the chinese communist party leader and others. the notoriously eccentric russian businessman said to get polanski has been released by cambodian authorities after agreeing not to leave the country he was arrested along with two other russians after allegedly threatening local sailors on a boat but his company denies the claims gonski rose to g.b.'s fame after a video of a brawl on russian t.v. went viral on the internet in two thousand and eleven a heated debate with fellow billionaire alexander lebedev finished with limited punching polanski to the floor another bizarre episode caught on camera saw in egypt piece of a time during online talk show blonsky had promised to nibble on the net where if

the price of his company's real estate didn't grow by one target. which. and now some other stories making headlines right now prosecutors in egypt are investigating allegations the country's muslim brotherhood and legally received as much as one point five billion dollars from the bomb administration two lawyers a father complaint against the organization x presidential candidate mitt romney made similar claims during his election campaign they've also accused the group of using armed militias to stoke violence both during and after the revolution in the country two years ago the muslim brotherhood which backs the egyptian president mohamed morsi has not commented on the accusations. but as well as president hugo chavez has severe respiratory complications following a lung infection caught during his cancer treatment in cuba where vice president nicolas maduro insisted chavez is not in a coma has been named successor should anything happen to challenge under the

constitution the socialist president is due to be sworn in for a third next week. chilean capital santiago there being violent clashes between protesters and police up to twelve arrests were made demonstrators threw molotov cocktails and started fires following a march commemorating the two thousand and eight killing by police of a young indian indigenous inhabitants of central and southern chile of clash with the government for years demanding better rights and an end to a fiction from what they claim is their land. the walls around israel have been extended with the country now building a security barrier on its border with syria israel says it wants to safeguard its citizens from the ongoing syrian conflict latest destruction comes right after a fence sprang up at the border with egypt the most visible wall however separates israel from the palestinians in gaza supporters say reduces the risk of suicide attacks in the jewish state and its claim it's an attempt to annex palestinian land

activists believes that israel's barrier is meant to help it dominate the middle east. israel has. to recalculate what they are doing in the middle east israel dealing with the middle east as a dominating power and they try all the time to build walls around them themselves claiming that the people is hating them and targeting israel has been harmed the whole region and the area around around israel they are building the wall around the palestinian areas we clean that is for security but it looked the palestinians in forty percent of the land they built around gaza and they turn goes into a jail the biggest prison in the world and we know how the diversity of the situation in gaza they are still syria and they are building a wall on the occupied land so they want to keep this london to keep themselves as if it's not a solution that you keep building walls you need to do peace with the region you

have to write to the people israel can't build its future on the expense of the people of the region and that then building walls to protect the to protect themselves is not going to protect israel it's people's rights and they will keep claiming the rights that it is leaving it and pushing it for the explosion we witness in the settlers is attacking the palestinians every day and many villages this is north of the jordan valley is evacuated not by no way that there is if we attack on the people in the south of settlers attacking the people in the middle areas so the. russian war on the palestinian people and they want the walls at the end too to bring peace to them stealing the people's land looking them in jails diversity it in their life is not going to do to bring peace in any way must realize that their years changing and they must they must understand this change that needs for them to conciliate with the people deal with the people i too i don't we don't consider yourself as part of your body you want to isolate yourself

and look yourself within the walls from the region you can do that nearly one hundred people in tibet have certain cells on fire in the last nine months in protest over the chinese rule of their territory beijing has been increasingly criticized by human rights organizations for its handling of protests in the restive region and now china is turning to economic leaders to try and integrate the area but pouring in tens of billions of dollars much of europe is kind of examines whether or not china can expect a return on those investments. i. love the look amnesty quality of china a slogan so widespread in tibet it's even displayed on taxis here everything is an ambiguous mix of modern technology and tradition communism and religion. six his son is a buddhist monk but ten years ago this elderly man joined the communist. do i knew

that the party is breathing new life into our nation and me my did your time this is quite a normal scene for us every day even as gather in the city center to pray right outside what is traditions are very strong here but at the same time chinese national red flags are hanging almost on every poor in every building as a constant reminder which country tibet is a part of. for decades china has been accused of occupying tibet and destroying its culture human rights organizations report numerous abuses there on a daily basis some are even willing to go to the most extreme measures in protest in almost all instances protests are put down through violence so chinese security personnel will come in and more years five to basically stop those protests we've documented cases where the chinese state lethal force against tibetans in one town

fifteen people were shot legal authorities denial of geishas of human rights violations claiming the so often malaysians are organized from abroad accusing the worst of a full scale media assault on china the united states has been using to bat for. six decades now since the truman administration co-opted to fight communism and they will continue this because their modus operandi these days seems to be human rights violations. over the years china spent over sixty billion u.s. dollars to build schools roads and water supplies as well as developing industries from beer factories to cultural workshops. outside the capital in one of tibet's most ancient temples when we ask the monk what he thinks of the exile of their spiritual leader the dalai lama he surprisingly said he didn't hear. the government supplies clothes food and other

necessities not the dalai lama i couldn't care less where he was assessing tibet is not easy even on the ground it's hard to see what's true and what's being deliberately shown to foreigners but what's crucial for the next generation of tibetans is that the mix of ancient traditions and beijing's billions can be off. going off r.t. tibet. well that's the way it's looking at the moment here and with the news team and more for you know about seventy five minutes from now in the meantime we have a regular financial checkup from washington with lauren list that's coming your way of the break.

ron paul has rejected the national rifle association safety plan and by safety plan the n.r.a. proposes basically turning every school in america into a prison camp so on this one ron paul i'm with you in the wake of the tragic events at sandy hook elementary and every vice president wayne la pierre called on congress to immediately appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every school so yeah what is the solution to isolated incidents of extreme violence make every child live their entire school life at gun point before putting armed guards in schools maybe we should take a look at the fact that more than twenty five percent of american kids are on medication and that's just the kids altering their mental state legally mom is working two jobs so she isn't around dad is a wall and the t.v. who's the new parent shows kids nothing but images glorify violence for evangel torture when someone is getting harassed every day at school and maybe getting harassed at home they feel totally alone and they see no future and no escape from

the hell that they're in they are going to take drastic measures to get out of it you know in the fifty's sixty's and seventy's there were still plenty of guns and there were no armed officers in schools but there were no shootings society changed and school violence erupted societies what needs to change to call them things back down but that's just my opinion. good afternoon welcome to capital account i'm lauren lyster here in washington d.c. these are headlines birth thursday january third two thousand and twelve economist nouriel roubini known as dr doom predicts it won't be long before there's another crisis in the west two months and back to seeing as this is when congress must deal with the debt ceiling and those seaquest ration spending cuts this shouldn't come as a major revelation so in the meantime from tax hikes to trillion dollar coin ideas

edward harrison is here to discuss what is likely to be the fallout from what he calls the fiscal cliff left and les miserables it is a hollywood blockbuster meant to show off a list actors singing chops or is it actually a valuable lesson in the economic misadventures of stated them very relevant today while jeffrey tucker argues the latter will hear why business week's cover feature is babies crying on capitol hill but what about a study that finds babies born during recessions are more likely to be delinquent teens no word on what happens if they get elected to office we'll have more in loose change plus we'll talk sped minutes an inflationary dragons' let's get to today's capital account.